It is the most frustrating experience to walk to the N line because it is such a huge gamble. It use to get so crowded that you had to shove in there like you were on a line going into Tokyo. Just wall-to-wall people. They alleviated some of that by having more stops come back earlier going the other way. Only took them 2+ years since I've been here to decide that was an actual GOOD IDEA.
Equally frustrating riding on the line is that the N-Judah is sometimes actually a J-Church train that comes back right before you enter the tunnel into Market St. The only sign it is not the one you want is the last car on the train is locked out, and the badging for the train still shows N-Judah.
So sometimes you get on that expecting to go through the tunnel except it dumps you right outside of it. Now you have to pray there is room leftover on the next N-Judah line. Or alternatively you can try for the J-Church train that is entering near where the N dropped you off. So N-Judah is the closest line, but 50% of the time I have to use the J-Church train to actually get into work.
And that's even assuming the tunnel into Market St. is not bogged down. Whose genius idea was it to have all lines converge into one line?
What's the point of all this and what's it have to do with this article? Well fucking MUNI that's what. They recently increased fees for cash payment/limited payment card to $2.50. It is still just "$2.25" if you have a Clipper card. When I arrived here 4 years ago it was $1? $1.25? to ride. Literally for the increase of $1 more per ride I have seen service get progressively worse. When this bug hit, it said 30 minutes 'til the next N-Judah train. I tweeted to MUNI's twitter about what was going on and it took them 20 minutes to respond. And all they can say is "technical" problem as though 40% of the population in SF doesn't know what that really means. It is an embarrassment. SF is suppose to be some tech capital of the world yet we can't even ride into work without pulling our hair out over getting there.
Sorry, ranting, but it is unbelievable how incompetent our public transportation is given how much money they have.